With flinty-eyed Brian Burke staring down, hard, from the top of the mound, you just expect a unending diet of fastballs.

A lot of chin music. Everything high and tight.

Well, at 58, the guy with the cascading grey comb-back proved he can still fool you with the off-speed stuff from time to time.

Just when we all expected Burke to go green, to recycle, maybe haul some old crony out of mothballs or install a yes man to act as ventriloquist sidekick to sit on his knee and move lips only at his express bidding, he goes and gets young. Gets vibrant. Gets, well … progressive.

Brad Treliving doesn’t seem like anybody’s Charlie McCarthy.

“I am that convinced,” maintained Burke, the Calgary Flames’ President of Hockey Operations, in announcing the capture of the seven-season assistant to Don Maloney in Phoenix as the general manager of the big team in this town. “I’ve been at this a long time so there’s not a GM I can’t call and say ‘OK, if you were looking at a young guy, who’d you be looking at?’ And it all kept coming back to Brad. I had one guy say to me ‘You’re not going to interview anyone else, are you?’ Like, incredulous.

“And everywhere I went, Brad was there. I kept bumping into Brad Treliving. Every rink I went into. I went to see (Aaron) Ekblad play and they said ‘Oh, Tre was here.’ Then I went in to see (Nick) Ritchie play and they said ‘Tre was here the day before.’ This guy, he works. And I don’t think you can succeed if you don’t work.

“So to me it was a very easy decision when we got permission.”

Staggeringly, Treliving was the only interviewee. Burke was granted a 10-day window by the Coyotes and they hammered out a deal. After the hot, dry years apprenticing in Arizona, the 44-year-old obviously felt the time had arrived to stake out on his own. He arrives highly recommended by not only Maloney and everyone in the desert, but by well-appointed people housed in posh offices at league headquarters. His days in Phoenix, helping piece together a competitive product under uniquely difficult circumstances, certainly caught Burke’s eye.

“When you work on a shoestring budget, you tend to have a really good analytic mind in terms of not making mistakes,” said Burke. “I know. I’ve worked in markets when we had to squeeze every penny until it screamed. We didn’t have any budget in Hartford. We were not a cap team in Anaheim.

“So I think it teaches you a discipline first off that’s valuable: We’re going to make sure we get it right.”

There were those among us utterly convinced that Burke himself would find no one better than Brian Burke to be the full-time GM.

“I came here to not be the general manager,” Burke said. “I’m sure everybody thinks the happiest guy in the room is Brad, but it’s probably me.”

Treliving has certainly earned this shot, is someone who’s run the gamut of jobs in the business. He actually started up a circuit, the old Western Professional Hockey League, on his own. He worked extensively with the Coyotoes’ American Hockey League farm club in Portland. He’s scouted kids. Evaluated minor-leaguers and NHLers alike.

And, while nobody’s puppet, he and Burke do share a similar philosophy in the construction of a team, essential in the success of any president-GM collaboration. There can be differences, surely in method, but communal belief in the blueprint is non-negotiable.

“I’ve known Brian for a while,” said Treliving. “We’ve never worked together. No two people are the same but Brian and I have talked over the years, I’ve followed his career.

“There’s a trail of success, a footprint of success, wherever he’s been. I don’t if I could’ve got a better mentor than Don (Maloney). People laugh, but it was a real partnership. You can get to the point where you’re finishing each other’s sentences. You need that in this business. It’s a difficult, hard league to win in. You need a strong, close relationship.

“Those things are easy to do today. It’s a nice day at the end of April here. But the middle of January when you’ve lost three in a row and four guys are hurt, that’s usually where the rubber meets the road. It was good (in Phoenix). I know it’s going to be just as good with Brian.”

Still, as surprising as Burke’s quickness in making a call on a post so crucial to the franchise is the fact that he didn’t turn to an old familiar face — why, ex-Washington GM George McPhee came on the market just the other day — instead of taking the plunge by inserting a newbie in the big chair.

“This management structure is conducive to that,” countered Burke. “If we’re right — and I think we are — this is a management team that could be in place for 10 years, instead of the usual four years if you don’t have success.

“The plan here is for stability, continuity and a long-term look at things.

“I think he has a good eye for talent and he wants to play Alberta hockey. That’s one of the things that came up very early on, that he was committed to black-and-blue hockey, what we call Alberta hockey. We’re determined to play that way. Not just because it’s our personal preference but because we think its what our fans want and what you need to win.

“Just watch (the playoffs) tonight. It’s a war out there. This group’s too small. There’s a commonality on how we want to play the game, on hard work and how to build a team.”

Even so, Brian Burke is an opinionated guy, obviously. Working alongside him is sure to carry its share of, uh, inherent challenges.

“The other reality of life is that we all have bosses,” joked Treliving, defusing those concerns, however momentarily. “I mean, that’s just how it works. When I leave here and go home I’ve got a boss there, her name’s Julie, and she scares the heck out of me a lot of nights.

“That’s how it works. So this is not anything new. And I have zero — zero — reservation about how it’s going to work.”

For the immediate future of the Calgary Flames it simply has to. And for all his brusque bluster, you’ve at least got to give Brian Burke this: On a game-changing out, just when you expect that 3-and-2 fastball up around the ears, he stares down from the mound and throws a change-up.

In this case, the payoff pitch fell off the edge of table.

“If I didn’t think we had the right guy, we would’ve kept interviewing” said Burke flatly.

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